Necromancer Falling: Book Two of The Mukhtaar Chronicles (2 page)

The necromantic link that tied Nicolas to Kagan became stronger when he mentioned Kagan’s name. Kagan was close.

“You did what needed to be done,” Tithian said, tapping Nicolas on the chest. “What none of us were capable of doing. And no, they weren’t waiting. They
materialized
off the coast. No sailing, no slow build up of forces. Just an…
appearance
. The entire armada, as far as we can tell.”

“Six months,” Nicolas said. “How is that possible?”

“I suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise,” Tithian said.

“Why not?” Nicolas said.

“For a start, you were born forty years ago but aged no more than twenty. I’d say time misbehaves around you far more than it misbehaves around others.”

Kaitlyn put her hand on Nicolas’s arm. She looked like she was about to throw up. “If he was born forty years ago, but only aged twenty, then why did time
speed up
when he came back here? When he left me, he was back within a few seconds. But when he left
you
, he was gone six months. It doesn’t make sense.”

“No,” Tithian said. “It doesn’t.”

“What are we going to do if they invade?” Nicolas said. “Kagan raised that damned barrier because he didn’t think the Three Kingdoms would survive an attack.”

“There have already been minor skirmishes in southern Religar,” Tithian said. “I think they’ve been testing the Empire’s defenses.”

Kagan entered the sanctuary, gripping the wooden handle of a straw broom. He swept the floor as he moved from side to side, criss-crossing around the room. He wore the same black zucchetto-style skull cap that Nicolas remembered. A red scapular—trimmed with black—wrapped around his shoulders and covered his white robes. Though he was undead and pasty, his corpse hadn’t decayed. He smelled only of incense and the dust his broom was pushing around. It must have something to do with how soon after his death he’d been raised. He swept the broom across Kaitlyn’s path, hitting her shoes in the process.

“Excuse
you
,” Kaitlyn said with a surprised expression.

“Don’t mind him,” Nicolas said. “He’s a little…”

“Evil?” Tithian said.

“I was going to go with
assholish
, but that will work.”

Kaitlyn turned and gazed at the orb.

“How did that thing get here?” Nicolas asked. “Did Arin return?”

Tithian bowed his head briefly when Nicolas named the god. “We waited for weeks before starting reconstruction on the sanctuary. We wanted your input. But when the weather started to turn, we could wait no longer. Shortly after the wall was complete, the orb simply appeared. A similar orb appeared at Pilgrim’s Landing, and we’ve had reports from Aquonome that an orb materialized in the cichlos temple as well.”

“Three orbs?” Nicolas asked. “Arin promised
two
.”

Tithian had to jump backward as Kagan hit his boots with the broom.

Kaitlyn yelled as she drew close to the orb. She put her hands on her head and doubled over.

Nicolas and Tithian rushed to her side and helped her into the nearby stone chair.

“This is my fault,” Nicolas said. “I should have told you to sit down as soon as we got here. The hunger is normal.”

“The hunger I can deal with,” Kaitlyn said. Her voice was strained. “It’s the knives in my temples I’m worried about.”

“Tithian,” Nicolas said, “do I have a room here? Chambers or something like that?”

“You do.”

“Can you help me with her?”

“I’ll be okay,” Kaitlyn said as she stood. “It’s Tithian, right? I’m Kait.”

She extended her hand to Tithian and doubled over once more. Tithian tried to help her back to the seat, but she stopped him.

“I shouldn’t have stood so fast,” Kaitlyn said.

Nicolas placed his arm around her waist to steady her balance.

“Can you have some food brought to…wherever we’re going?” Nicolas asked.

“I’ll take care of it,” Tithian said. “You should change into something cleaner. Those Arinian robes look like they’ve been through a battle.”

“They
have
been.”

Tithian chuckled. “That’s right. Ten minutes, you say. You’ll find clothes in your chambers, including formal robes appropriate for the ritual tomorrow morning.”

“What ritual? No, no, no. I don’t need any ritual. I need rest.
Kait
needs rest. I met my birth father an hour ago and he tried to kill me. Give me a break over here!”

“Have you not heard anything I’ve said? The Council has demanded an installation ceremony. Now that you’re back, I can prove you actually exist. They need leadership. We all do. Half of them think
I
usurped Kagan’s throne, and the other half think
Lord Mujahid
did. We need to quell the rumors.”

Nicolas groaned but nodded. “We’re going to need something less…blue jeans and Converse for Kaitlyn to wear.”

“I’ll have a selection brought to your chambers for Lady Kaitlyn.”

Kagan hit Tithian with the broom’s handle as he swept past him.

“And can you please tell him to stop?” Tithian asked.

“Stop what?”

“He’s been sweeping around the clock since you sent him for a broom six months ago!”

Nicolas shook his head and sent the order through the necromantic link. But part of him couldn’t help thinking it served Kagan right.

“I don’t know what to do if the Barathosians decide to attack for real,” Nicolas said. “I hope you have some ideas.”

“Perhaps,” Tithian said. But he turned away without continuing.

“Perhaps what?” Nicolas asked.

Tithian faced Nicolas, but he seemed uncertain.

“Perhaps
what
?” Nicolas repeated.

“In your absence, we discovered what I believe may be the
protoforges
,” Tithian said.

Nicolas waited several moments for an explanation that wasn’t coming. “From now on, just assume I’m going to ask
what
whenever you talk.”

“When you brought the Great Barrier down, there was one final upheaval of the land. A terrible one. It struck Tildem the worst. But that’s not important. What’s important is what we
found
…buried deep within the mountains of Tildem.”

“I still don’t know what a
protoforge
is.”

Tithian furrowed his brow as if Nicolas had said he didn’t know what a door was.

“Apologies,” Tithian said. “I sometimes forget you…”

“Don’t know jack about Erindor?”

Tithian frowned. “Jack who?”

“The protoforge things, Tithian.”

“The protoforges are spoken of in the
Origines Multiversi
, a set of books written by the ancient prophet Habakku. Those books tell us how Erindor was created. What life was like millennia ago. What the gods expect of people. And so much more. They even tell us of the first Mukhtaar Lords.”

“We have a similar book back on Earth. A few, if I’m being honest. But you’re saying you
found
them in Tildem?”

“We can’t be
certain
, but…”

“But you’re certain?”

“Certainly!”

“Well
what are they
?” Nicolas asked.

Tithian leaned forward. “Simply put, they were the molds in which the first Orbs of Power were formed.”

“Why is this important? Don’t get me wrong. I’m an archaeologist. I understand the importance of relics. But what’s the connection to the Barathosians?”

“Oh my god, Nick,” Kaitlyn said. “Tithian just told you they found the thing that makes
those
things.” She pointed at the orb. “By the transitive property, those protoforges sound really powerful and important.”

“Okay! You don’t need to be all—”

“
Knives in my temples
, remember?”

Tithian made a placating gesture with his hand. “I’m going to have the fragments tested. If these
are
protoforge fragments, they may serve our purposes in Dar Rodon. If the
Origines
is correct, they can be unpredictable. And if
we
can’t predict what they’ll do, then neither can the Barathosians…”

“Now tell me the part you left out.”

“Excuse me?”

“Dammit, Tithian,” Nicolas said. “I’m not trying to interrogate you, but I don’t understand why you’re holding back. We’ve got a problem that needs solving, and I can’t do this by myself.”

“That’s right,” Tithian said. He glanced at Kagan, who stood silently next to the Orb of Power. “In your absence, I’d forgotten just how unlike your father you are.”

“
Birth
father,” Nicolas said.

Tithian nodded. “I meant no offense, Archmage.”

“Dammit all!” Nicolas had had enough. He needed an adviser, not a subordinate. “You’re not
offending
me. And if your idea about these protoforge fragments doesn’t pan out, we’ll try something else. I’m not going to get pissed off because you tried something that didn’t work. Just tell me what you need to tell me. I’m not Kagan.”

Tithian grinned. “You most certainly are not. Right, then. When I received word from my contacts in Tildem, they had no idea what they’d uncovered. But I suspected. So I attempted to use a translocation orb to teleport to Hiboran—that’s a city in the far west of Tildem, close to the mountain range where the fragments were uncovered.”

“Attempted?”

“It didn’t work. Not…
exactly
. Instead of materializing outside of Hiboran, I felt a…
deflection
. I ended up some fifty leagues to the northwest of Hiboran, outside a city called
Tur
. Gave an onion farmer a pretty good fright when I materialized in his house. Every subsequent attempt to travel there met with the same result.”

“How will these fragments help us?”

“They seem to disrupt magic. We don’t know what the Barathosians have at their disposal, but it certainly can’t hurt our efforts.”

Nicolas helped Kaitlyn back up.

“She needs food
pronto
,” Nicolas said.

“You both need rest. We’ll regroup tomorrow before the ceremony.”

Nicolas nodded and followed Tithian out of the sanctuary.

Aelron grunted as the trailer rolled over a deep rut on the forest road.

Forty years ago he’d joined the Shandarian Rangers as an equal. Now he was in a cage on the back of a trailer being kicked out and taken back to his home. All because he couldn’t
moor
—telepathically bond—with an adda-ki. Only rangers could tame and ride the massive feline mounts. So, if he couldn’t moor, he wasn’t worth keeping around, in their opinion.

That wasn’t entirely fair. He
had
killed a fellow ranger as well. That might have played into their decision to evict him.

Letcher had it coming. But they don’t see it that way.

He banged his head on the side of the cage as the wagon lurched over another deep rut.

“I’m not complaining,” Aelron said, “but can we try to miss a few of those?”

“Someone forgot to gag him,” a ranger said. The others erupted in laughter.

Aelron didn’t catch which one had said it, but it was a reminder to keep his mouth shut. His escort hadn’t bound his wrists or ankles—he was in a steel cage, so why bother?—and he wanted to keep it that way.

As he glanced around his rolling jail cell, it became clear the dense forest of towering pines was a prison unto itself. With the seasons turning, if he didn’t die of exposure between here and Caspardis, which was two-hundred miles to the south, then a shriller or roaming crag spider would do what the frigid weather couldn’t. And it would be no use trusting this unmaintained roadway they traveled. For four decades, the road dead-ended in an impenetrable yellow dome. No one knew whether anyone under it was still alive.

Aelron didn’t know what the rangers had in mind for him, but he was certain riding into the area once covered by that dome was a bad idea. He’d lost friends to that dome when it was still up, and he didn’t have many friends left to spare.

More accurately, he had
no
friends left. Forty years their brother, but now they treated him like a pariah.

If only I had more time!

It was no use lying to himself. Time would solve nothing. He was twenty years past the age most Shandarian Rangers had
moored
with an adda-ki, forming a bond that ended only when rider or mount died. But his ageless face was another difference they wouldn’t let him forget.

And he couldn’t give them a reason for it, because he didn’t know
why
he’d stopped aging.

Killing Letcher was simply the final entry on a
long
list of items they didn’t like about him. It mattered little to them he’d only done so in self-defense.

Freya, Captain Jacobson’s
adda-ki
, roared for no reason Aelron could decipher. But then there was little about the giant feline mounts, with their bright-red fur, that he understood. Not only would they not
moor
with him, but the riderless ones became aggressive whenever he approached. They stampeded the last time, killing two rangers and injuring five others.